AM in India

We left big city life for the natural beauty of the Swiss Alps. Here, our tent came in handy, but we quickly realized that it was not water proof. On a couple occasions, we had to get up in the middle of the night after the rain had slowed to take all of our luggage, sleeping bags, pillows, and gifts out of the tent. Next, we had to squeegee the sleeping bags and pillows out and dump the water out of our tent. On the nights it didn’t rain, we slept well despite the fact that we could see glaciers when we peaked out of the tent and didn’t really have any winter clothes. At least I didn’t have any winter clothes because Ali had dressed in all of hers and then used mine as extra ... read more

We left Sofia and started what seemed to be a week long train/bus/car/ferry ride. After all was said and done I really think the time from Sofia, Bulgaria to our campsite in Dubrovnik, Croatia took around 37 hours. Our route consisted of the following: an 8 hour train ride from Sofia Bulgaria to Nis Serbia, followed by a 7 hour layover, and then a 16 hour overnight bus ride to Montenegro, followed by a 4 hour layover, and then a 2 hour car ride into Dubrovnik Croatia, followed by a 30 minute bus ride to our camp site. The travel was gruesome, but we did save some money by not having to book a hotel one night because we had to sleep on the bus. The bus portion of our trip was so long, that our ... read more

Days 5 to 7 The days are starting to blur together and, surprisingly, we don’t have much time to update our blog between all the shopping and traveling, so we’re going update a couple days at a time from here out. We made our way to the Blue Moss where the women had to cover themselves and the men had to wear pants in the 90 degree heat. The Blue Moss was quite a specimen and I said a couple prayers for loved ones and made some wishes. I’m not sure whether wisher or prayers held more weight here in the Blue Moss. Now I have to give it some time to see if my wishes and prayers come true. We also visited the Underground Cistern, where Indiana Jones was once filmed. AM: Actually known as ... read more

It keeps surprising me how different parts of India can be so tropical and so vastly different from other parts. Whenever someone spoke to me of India I never pictured thousands of palm trees scaling up hillsides, or rolling waves crashing into golden colored sandy beaches. Goa was untamed and wild and I loved it. Nature is fighting back in Goa, obviously winning the war and overtaking most of the old colonial homes with its vines and mildew. Not that nature doesn't appear to be fighting back everywhere in India but here it appeared to be winning rather than dying a slow and agonizing death. Little too melodramatic? Sorry. We took the hour flight from Bangalore to Goa on another Kingfisher prop plane and thankfully for once did not have to contend with monsoon style wind ... read more

After work on Friday we jumped on a plane and headed out to see the Taj Mahal and the surrounding area known as The Golden Triangle (Delhi - Agra - Jaipur). We got into Delhi around 1am due to bad weather and a delayed flight, took a car obviously stolen from a nearby junkyard from the airport to the hotel and argued with the hotel desk clerk for about half an hour over our reservations and payment for the airport pickup (the hotel had a bar attached called ‘Thugs’ and still managed to charge an exorbitant amount of money). We started to walk out the door and find somewhere else to stay (like the floor of the train station at this point) when management finally backed off and gave us the keys to our room. Similar ... read more